Some ‘Timeless’ thoughts review

Time, managed correctly can heap large profits and key to the success of many people. Those that have difficulty with it wish they can change it, go back to a point or just stop it to get all their pending work done. I don’t have much time to watch TV shows, so I focus on a few and some that I happen to stumble upon. My focus currently revolves around The Walking Dead, Supernatural and Marvel’s Agents of SHIELD. I also binge watch on Netflix Marvel stuff whenever they come out as I see the whole of the MCU as one big soap opera. Fanboy! There I said it. I also know I’m missing out on other shows like The Flash, Arrow, Supergirl and the talk of the town, Game of Thrones. Just like James Rolfe, YouTube’s Angry Video Game Nerd, so many seasons have already passed on a few good shows that I have no time to get back to and may not have that time. Perhaps when I retire and not have to worry about my exhausting day job. With SHIELD currently on hiatus and nothing new from MCU Netflix yet, that time slot became available and being a fan of Supernatural; I chose to binge on another Eric Kripke creation called Timeless.

Lime me, pretty sure everyone else has a few shows they’re a fan of and focus on. Again, we can’t watch every new show that comes out. Like Bill Shatner, we’d have to retire for that. Some of you probably know, Timeless is a sci-fi show about time travel. It’s about a group of individuals named Lucy Preston, a historian; Wyatt Logan, Delta Force agent; and Rufus Carlin a programmer/technician assigned to stop a terrorist called Garcia Flynn from changing the course of American history. Garcia steals an experimental time machine in order to travel through time and change American history and the three pursue him in a functioning prototype. Through the course of the show, you’ll see small and sometimes shocking changes to what you’ve been taught in history class. As if everything we’ve been taught is true, right? Anyway, Timeless is quite an engaging show and in some ways mirror Kripke’s other creation, Supernatural, like the importance of family, trust and teamwork. Supernatural alums Jim Beaver and Misha Collins even made appearances on the show.

Timeless is a series that will keep you in suspense as to what happens next. How will history be changed through the cast’s actions? How will they fit in? And boy, they do fit in; in comedic ways. Since the show is about American history, audiences will get to see historical figures such as Abraham Lincoln; General William Travis and Davy Crockett in the Alamo; NASA’s Katherine Johnson recently featured in the film Hidden Figures; Bonnie and Clyde, Jessie James, Charles Lindbergh and many more. The show is quite educational and will educate audiences about facts of the aforementioned people, events and the people around them as well as the implications of what could happen should something change.

The show kept me thinking about the implications of every person misdirected or killed in every episode as the mere fact that the team saved a little girl from being killed in the Hindenburg disaster resulted in the erasure of Lucy’s sister from the timeline. The main cast is mostly sheltered from the effects since they and their vehicles exist out of time. Time travel is just so crazy that you’ll just have to go with the basics or end up lost and confused in the details.

Time travel films can be difficult to produce especially in the financial department. Many times, films choose to travel to just one or very few periods due for financial reasons. Each time period requires research, different wardrobe, sets and even vehicles. Timeless has them all and tries to make everything authentic in Season 1’s span of 16 episodes. Timeless is a great show that deserves to go on but must go back in time to retrieve Blackbeard’s treasure in order to keep going.

The expense required to produce Timeless, much like Agents of SHIELD often puts sci-fi shows in the red unless they achieve a stable viewership/cost ratio. Both shows have that problem in common. The news is already out that AOS might not be renewed after the Framework arc unless the show gets more viewers and fans are in debate whether the show is in syndication or not. There’s not much news about Timeless, but there’s hope since the series ended with a cliffhanger as the organization Flynn and the heroes have been fighting continue to exist after their ultimate effort.

“We’ve always set out to tell this one-season story that then would provide a launching point for a Season 2, but that would answer a lot of things, and I think we did it… We didn’t have any conversations where we were pulling out ratings and trying to do the math. We’re just writers, and we told the best story we could. So we’ll let the chips fall where they may.”

But several good shows have ended in such a way, notably Firefly. Timeless was nominated for a 2017 People’s Choice Award for Favorite New TV Drama which is saying something and discussions about the show have been overwhelmingly positive mostly about the show’s writing and educational value. Really hoping the show comes back.